


Light-Lost

by Nosferatank



Series: Beingverse [3]
Category: A Hat in Time (Video Game)
Genre: Florist is also there for like 2 lines, Gen, Missing scene from the 300 years between the fall of subcon and First Contact, Some subconite cuddling because YEAH.... YEAH
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:36:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28796271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nosferatank/pseuds/Nosferatank
Summary: The light that loses, the night that wins;And time remembered is grief forgotten,And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,And in green underwood and coverBlossom by blossom the spring begins.--The two monsters of Subcon re-establish their boundaries, teeth bared. Snatcher looks after his own.
Relationships: Snatcher & Snatcher's Minions (A Hat in Time), Snatcher & Subcon Dwellers (A Hat in Time)
Series: Beingverse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2060283
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38





	Light-Lost

**Author's Note:**

> me posting this like AUGH FUCK I DONT HAVE A TITLE LET ME JUST [glues pretentious poetry into the title box]
> 
> This was actually a prompt fill from jam-blue but I basically fell off the cliff and landed on the 'hey this can fit into your big ole ahit au' pile. Hope u don't mind dude!
> 
> Set some decades after the Icepocalypse.

The eternal winter across the canyon, as life-void as it seemed, was not stagnant. It was undying, and unstable, and constantly cycling- much like its source as she paced the halls of her derelict den. 

Much like the cold-wire prickle of cold rolling across the edges of the Snatcher’s senses, mist-soft and deadly. 

Decades, and the declaration of battle the blizzard issued still gripped his heart in claws of fear, before he shook it off and slithered to the border. Vanessa was not strong enough to break past Snatcher and into the forest; he knew it, and she knew it, and every soul in Subcon knew it. Didn’t stop her attempted trespasses from being _terrifying as all hells_.

Snatcher saw the plush Subconites before he saw the ice-wraith. “What are you _doing_ here?” he demanded lowly, a reprimanding growl in the back of his throat. “You’re supposed to be at the center with the others-” 

He froze, as something flickered like a storm of wings in dark clouds. Slowly plucked the Subconites from the ground, dwarfed next to his massive claws. Tense as a strung bow, Snatcher waited. 

The icy blast that screamed across the bridge like a blizzard forced through a wind-tunnel still clipped his tail, if only just barely. 

Snatcher gave himself no time to recover. Every other clash at the border had been almost ritualistic, in comparison- there was much stalking and threatening and swirling steam from colliding magic, but Vanessa never was so foolish as to walk into the jaws of her death, and the thought of leaving Subcon to chase her into her territory was _wrong-danger-nest-unguarded_ enough that Snatcher never dared.

He’d always been alone for these claw-probing territory squabbles, however. His wards were under strict orders _never_ to approach the border when the Queen was on the prowl. 

Vanessa’s ice-black silhouette emerged from the freezing fog at the same time her voice did. “I am not being patient any longer, thief! _Where is he!?_ ”

Vanessa’s words were nothing but sparks on the wind to Snatcher, as he was uncomfortably aware of the tiny plush bodies hidden behind his coils, and the woman who killed them just ahead of him- who haunted him, body and mind.

But he was no longer the shivering two-legged thing who bloodied himself tearing out ingrown feathers from his fresh cuff-scars, who clumsily forced his hands to stitch like a human’s did as he made bodies for his clan-wards. An arc of void seemed to blot out the moonlight as Snatcher rose to his full height, talons splayed and feathers bristling and spines flexing, a thousand pounds of apex predator in a full threat display. 

Each snap of his teeth echoed like a cannonshot, teeth scraping sparks against each other. Yet still Vanessa did not flee. “If you will not tell me what you did with my love,” she threatened. “Then I will tear it from your _corpse!_ ”

The air crystallized, cold and numbing and overpowering everything but the press of woolen bodies against his back and the lit-match bite of fire behind his throat, and Snatcher’s lingering doubts vanished. His duty to his wards would exceed the wrought iron trap of obligation and love he had felt towards his fiancée. Always.

_Not if I kill you first!_

There was no such thing as _only_ fire. But the storm that erupted from talons and maw like the heartbeat of a volcano certainly came close, lightning and lava hammered into lashing ribbons.

The swathe of tundra glowed red like cooling magma, wide as a comet’s trail and just as hot. In the center, the steaming remains of her magic-reinforced ice shield collapsed around her, Vanessa stood stunned. 

Snatcher hissed, a grating shriek that echoed in the dark and forced the queen back a step. 

Form hidden by steam and smoke, Vanessa turned away and retreated, living to come back another day.

A tittering sound and shuffling cloth prompted him to swing his head around, looming above the little things hidden behind him.

“Lord Luka! Oh that was _so boss_ , the ice was like _pssst_ and the fire was _whoosh_ and- ack!” The Subconite squeaked as Snatcher held them up to his eye, little steel-points from inside their plush body pricking into the pads of his foot. Knife, then, as she called herself. Who was seventeen when she died, and thus should _know better._

“And what-” Snatcher hissed at a distinctly-cowed Knife. “-Were you doing at the canyon after the light-signal to come to the center went out?”

Knife sputtered and blustered, but Snatcher’s attention was grabbed by the insistent tugging on his torso’s feathers. “Um, It’s my fault. I’m sorry.” And this voice was _young_ , and too-familiar with the accent of Pryce-held lands, and the owner couldn’t have been more than _eight_ when they died. “I got lost, and she came looking for me, and then it got _cold-_ ” They shivered demonstratively at the memory of frost-stiffening fibers, despite their nerveless body.

Currently with one hand full of cotton-and-blade stuffed teenager, and the other bracing him to the ground, Snatcher opted to lower his head down, feather ruff brushing the grass; a dragon, bowing before a mouse. “Get on. I’m taking you to the rest.” He did _not_ have the energy to scold them, honestly- that fire had burned far more fuel than he was expecting. 

His arrival at the hollow heart-tree was met with worried gazes, both masked and flame-blank. Camellia, standing guard at the entrance, loosened her grip on her sword-hilt. “Rough day at work?” she teased, once it was evident nobody was injured. 

“Ugh, you have no idea,” Snatcher complained. Flopped onto the mound of scavenged rugs and pillows at the center of the otherwise-empty tree. Wordlessly, he swept the remaining Dwellers and Subconites towards him with his tail, like a wave pushing leaves on the water. All he wanted to do was _sleep_ , or go into torpor, or whatever it was that ghosts did that was sleep-adjacent. 

“Hey, um, can you let go?” Knife squirmed in his still-closed claws. 

Snatcher cracked one eye open. “Not until I know you’re not going to wander off.”

“That’s not very boss of you, actually,” she huffed, crossing her stubby arms. 

“Yeah, well I’m _the_ boss. Deal with it.”

Snatcher sighed- a great, gusting thing, smoke billowing from his mouth and briefly filling the hollow. He twitched at the scrape of stone against feathers as Camellia patted him, just close enough to the patchy, thinning areas of his upper arms that it sent shivers down his spine. “Get your beauty sleep, I’ll watch the rest of the kids.”

Drifting, Snatcher counted every point of pressure as the exhaustion of a spent flame caught up to him. Knife, resting on his now-loosened claws. The young Subconite still on his back, wedged between two of his spines. The Dwellers draped over him like snakes on a sun-warmed rock, and yet more stuffed ghosts crammed into his ruff, under the feathers of his arms, curled against his tail. 

Something warm and fierce and soft and _demanding_ flared in his gut. Responsibility, tempered not by obligation, but by choice. People that were _his_ , hundreds of wards under the wing of Clan Pryce who would never grow old enough to leave the eaves of the Pryce Estate and join the warriors, to court their own spouses, to fight and teach and live. And neither would he. 

He did not need that, though. He could just as easily find contentment here, now, surrounded by fragile not-prey and resting in the depths of a forest lashed with the claw-marks of a roving hunter. 

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, not very plotty, but very, very fun to write (as creechur snatcher always is), get the ole description muscles warmed up for the next project. Hope you enjoy dude!
> 
> [tumblr](https://banyanas.tumblr.com/tagged/get-along-hat)  
> 


End file.
